FROM EDN EUROPE: Labview gains configurable signal-routing capability

National Instruments has extended the features and performance of its popular instrument-driving, data-acquiring, and data-analysing Labview software package in a new release tagged Labview 7 Express (Picture). The software can now configure custom signal-routing and analysis algorithms in an FPGA, specific to a particular application. As before, you define the application in the Labview GUI and set the parameters you require of custom hardware for device simulation, custom interfaces, closed-loop control modules, and other functions. The new hardware resource is a PXI card with a Xilinx Virtex FPGA; Labview outputs VHDL to configure your custom hardware, and a conventional synthesis process (in FPGA-design terms) runs to produce a configuration bit stream for the FPGA. The FPGA programming is, however, transparent; you design at graphical level and need not handle the VHDL. NI says that because you can implement parallel structures—the software creates separate modules in the VHDL to represent processes that can run in parallel—and because algorithms can be coded directly in hardware rather than programmed in microprocessor code, you can realise very large performance gains over the software option.

NI has also extended the range of targets on which you can run the Labview interface; you can now perform graphical development and control running applications on Pocket PC and Palm OS handheld devices. Following the established model for such devices, you can interface to the rest of your system over wired or wireless Ethernet, serial links, or IrDA. NI has also adjusted the parameters of the executable and configuration of the graphical environment to make best use of the PDA format.

Labview also now offers improved support for developing deterministic, real-time control applications and an incremental increase in the power of the graphical programming model through the use of Express Virtual Instruments, which bundle more comprehensive measurement tasks behind the GUI icons.

National Instruments, +44 1635 572400, www.ni.com.